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Show V the stories that now dominate our sibling reunions. Tommy was the older of the two and while he appeared quiet and innocent, I learned that he delighted in getting Casey to carry out his wild and usually dangerous ideas. He has admitted ad-mitted to being the ring-leader and likened Casey to the robot in Lost In Space that would do anything it was commanded. He was like a little puppy, eager ea-ger to do Tom's bidding, and no amount of pain could divert his loyalty. So with a willing accomplice, accom-plice, Tom thought up ways to inflict pain and not get in trouble. Like the time he convinced con-vinced Casey to put a sleeping bag over his head and ride down the driveway on his bike. When Casey hit the apple tree and was cold-conked, Tom fell to the ground laughing so hard he lost control of his bladder. (Mom would not approve if I said he wet his pants.) Did this teach Casey a lesson? les-son? Sadly no, and that was only one of the many "tricks" Tom taught his younger brother. When they were 10 and 12, our parents went to Europe to get Brant from his mission and they employed teenager Gail Matthews Mat-thews to "babysit". They loved her because she spent hours talking to her boyfriend, which gave Tom and Casey time to get into all kinds of mischief. One day they were bored so Tom decided to siphon gas from the old Ford truck, not having a plan for it's use, but figuring the ideas would come in time. They both knew the power of gas because Dad used it to burn the pruned fruit tree limbs, keep the weeds cleared in the ditches, and start a good fire when camping. They got about a gallon in the cherry picking bucket and the ideas started to flow. Tom sprinkled gas on the gravel driveway then threw a match on it to create a small flame. That apparently wasn't exciting enough, so he poured gas on his and Casey's back bike tires, put a match to them and off they rode with flames chasing after. Gail was blissfully bliss-fully cooing with Jeff, oblivious to the arsonists in the front yard. We lived out in the farm country, and one or maybe two cars in an hour would go down the road, more likely it would be Nyle Wadley on his tractor so traffic was of little consequence to kids on flaming bikes. With that adventure extinguished, extin-guished, Tom went for the big one. a match in the bucket. He put it in the road, which seemed the safest place, and threw the lit match into it. There was a whoosh and the flames went so high Tom was sure the house would catch on fire while black smoke filled the air and could be seen for miles around. That he and Casey didn't catch fire is a testament that angels had their work cut out for them. When mom and; dad got home, they were puzzled, as was Gail, as to why the lawn was burned in circular patterns in the back yard. The tell-tell signs of plastic army men had been removed after they met their demise in the "war", but one particularly large burn mark was never spoken of until years later when Pat took Casey to Japan Ja-pan for a surprise visit to Tom. As they sat around the table, ta-ble, laughing at the tales of their youth, Pat got serious and asked if they knew what had happened to her first-edition Ken and Barbie Bar-bie dolls. The two brothers became be-came silent, exchanging guilty looks across the table and Casey solemnly told of Ken's untimely death as he was being burned to "Granny" continued on Page 9 by Geri Taylor However did my brothers ; survive childhood? Some of my siblings and ' I got together last week for a : sort of reuniontell the stories again, get-together. ' I grew up with a sister and four brothers ' who were typical boys. They : dismantled, burned and other-' other-' wise destroyed anything they got their hands on, Of course, this is from a girls point of view so I'm sure they would argue their transformation of toys, etc. were an improvement. They also learned how to fix things so ' mom wouldn't find out they had ; broken them. The exploits of the two youngest brothers were most definitely inspired by their older ones, even though neither Tom nor Casey were born when Dennis Den-nis set John Swensen's dairy barn on fire, and they were way too young to remember a BB Brant shot into the quivering flesh of the steer pinging onto the plate during Sunday dinner. I just know they didn't get their crazy ideas from their sisters, at least not from me. We were all adults before hearing of the many "adven- ! tures" of the Monson brothers and marveled that either one I , of them survived childhood. I know our parents went to their '. : graves never knowing most of i - "Granny" continued from Page 5 death in a building. His dear, loving girl friend Barbie, sacrificed sac-rificed her own life, trying to save him. Actually GI Joe was to blame since he hated Ken because he was a wimp and no good as an army man. That evening Casey, Tom and his Japanese brother-in-law went outside and soon sounds of bottle rockets and occasional screams brought Pat and our sister-in-law, Sumiko, to the window. No, the flaming flam-ing rockets were not being shot into the sky, but at each other in a vacant lot as they played a new form of war. How Tom talked Toshiki into this "contest" "con-test" I will never know, but I'm sure it didn't take much to convince Casey, "this will be fun". The only casualty that night was a hole in Tom's new T-shirt In retrospect, it now makes sense why mom would take Tom and Casey up American Fork canyon with their sleeping sleep-ing bags, food and possibly matches, drop them off and. tell them to be home in a two or three days. Maybe she knew more than she ever let on. |